Field Note

Definitive Guide to Social Media Marketing Terms: Part I

December 03, 2018

Our roundup of all the social media marketing terms and definitions you need to know

By Arielle Mullen

If you have a business, chances are that you also have a social media presence in one form or another. And as each platform continues to build and expand the features offered, what was once a simple 'if you build it they will come,' has morphed into an entirely different animal. With that in mind, we felt it pertinent to roundup all the most important terms and definitions surrounding social media marketing (SMM). Read on for the first half of our two part guide on all the most important keywords you definitely need to know.

A/B Testing (AKA Split Testing): Method for testing two versions of a social media post, ad, etc. to see which will be most successful. Potential elements to test include graphics, headline, call-to-action (CTA), etc.

Ads Manager (Facebook): Tool in Facebook used for building, publishing, and analyzing the performance of ads on Facebook, Instagram, or Audience Network.

Audience: The group of people reached with your content.

Bio: The short description on your profile that summarizes your company.

Boosted Post (AKA Promoted Post): Facebook post that you put money behind to extend the reach. Boosted posts are different than ads, as they started as a standard post. (Ads offer increased functionality).

Business Manager (Facebook): Free software created by Facebook to help companies and agencies manage multiple Pages, ad accounts, and employees. This tool acts as a central hub and offers increased security, as data is processed and held by the company, rather than individual users.

Chatbot: A program built with AI that's aimed at automating customer service.

Clickbait: Content designed to entice people to click through (think every Buzzfeed article ever). Creating clickbait is not a recommended strategy on Facebook as you run the risk of a drastically lowered reach.

Clickthrough Rate (CTR): The percentage of people who were shown your ad and clicked on it.

Conversion Rate (CVR): Percentage of people who saw your ad and took a specific action. The action could be clicking a link, making a purchase, signing up for a class, downloading an item, etc.

Cost per Click (CPC): Metric explaining how much of your ad budget you paid for each click.

Crowdsourcing: Method of utilizing a group of people to generate content, information, etc. (Example: Asking your followers to submit their ideas for a new feature on a product)

Direct Message: Private message sent directly to an inbox.

Disappearing Content (AKA Expiring Content): Social media posts that disappear after a certain amount of time has passed. Snapchat and Instagram stories are an example of this.

Engagement Rate: Metric which tells you the rate at which people interacted in some way with a post. It's generally defined as (number of engagements / number of people who saw the post) x 100%. Each social media platform might define "engagement" slightly differently.

Evergreen Content: Content that holds up over time, continuing to provide value.

Follower: Social media user who has opted in to follow your posts on their feed.

FOMO: Acronym for "fear of missing out." (Expiring content relies on FOMO for their success).

Frequency: Metric explaining how many times the users in your target audience were shown your ad.

Hashtag: Method for categorizing posts on social media. By searching for a particular hashtag, users can view all of the posts using it.

Header Image (AKA Cover Photo): Graphic placed at the top of a user's social media profile. The ideal dimensions for a header image will vary by social media channel.

Impressions: Metric that measures how many times your post, content, ad, etc. has appeared in people's social media feeds. This number will vary from the Reach, which measures how many people saw the content in question.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI): The metric you've designated that will define whether an ad campaign, post, etc. was successful or not. (Example: If your business created a Facebook carousel ad to drive purchases on your website, you might designated "Conversions" as one of your KPIs).

Stay tuned for Part II of our guide! Are you interested in growing your business by utilizing social media marketing? Schedule your consultation today and let's talk!